Who is the Lakeside Longarmer?

Hi all! I’m Melissa McIntosh, and I want to help you finish your quilts, no matter where you live! My longarm, and my life with my husband and daughter, happens on the shore of the largest lake (Lake Manitou) on the largest island (Manitoulin Island, Ontario) in a lake (Lake Huron.) Did you get that?? Yep, the Manitoulin Island is the largest freshwater island in the world, and I am lucky enough to call it home. This is fact makes the cover of the newspaper every time it is a question on Jeopardy, and something you will definitely need to know for trivia nights.

I have been quilting since 2007, ever since I made my first trek up North to teach in a two room schoolhouse in a fly-in community, with a $5 garage sale sewing machine and a stack up half meter cuts of every plaid flannel fabric I could find in Fabricland. My favourite part of the whole process has always been the quilting, never the piecing. Once I moved to the Island and joined a guild and realized that most quilters felt the exact opposite, I started thinking more and more about getting into the business of machine quilting. More interesting facts: 1. The first longarm in Canada was owned by a woman on the Manitoulin Island. 2. The Manitoulin Island is the lost Island of hand quilters.

Longarming then came about as a way to stay at home with my daughter. It all came together naturally. I had been quilting for a couple of friends using my domestic machine, and then seven years ago woman on the other shore of the lake was moving and was selling her bare bones, jimmy-rigged old longarm. Each little upgrade has progressed since then, from a small machine, to a bigger machine with one bell and no whistle, to my dream machine with constantly added bells and whistles. The final whistle is the computerization system that I most recently acquired that will allow me to stitch out the very precise geometric edge to edge designs that I have fallen in love with.

Doing the math, and by way of providing some credentials, I have been quilting for 14 years, longarming for 8 years, and have been published in A Needle Pulling Thread magazine, and The Canadian Quilter. My machine quilting has won numerous awards at the local and district level of the Ontario Association of Agricultural Societies competitions, and been on display at Quilt Canada, and The Creative Festival. in 2020 I accomplished my goal of becoming a finalist in the Quilt Canada National Juried Show! Woot woot!

Finally, having lived in some of the most remote locations in Canada, I realize how hard it can be to find services locally. Because of that, I gladly accept quilts through the mail from all of North America. I carry batting, for your convenience, and am happy to find the most convenient shipping methods for you, no matter how many planes or ice roads it takes to get there! I love quilting, and that is all I want to do. Think how happy we can make each other if you do all the piecing that you love, and hand it off to me to do the quilting that I enjoy doing! Let’s get these projects done so we can move on to the next, and the next, and the next….. ;-)